Kāishǐ Tānpái!
by Fruitiest of Mallards
Summary: A collection of short-stories. Before we begin the Showdown, please let me express my liking for Jamiko, and Jack Spicer, just to give you a vague idea of what kinds of things you'll find in here, although breaks from the norm will appear. Xièxiè nǐ, yǒu lèqù de yuèdú!
1. Red

_Before we begin the Showdown, please let me express my love for Jamiko, and Jack Spicer, in general. These short-stories are open for adoption and expansion, and can be taken multiple times by different people, or even the same person, just ask me permission, link me, and credit me in the resulting fic. I want to see what you've written, it always makes me feel great to see that I've inspired someone. I always have the right to say no for whatever reason._

_Most, if not all, of these are connected, and dwell in the same 'universe,' together, unless stated otherwise. Sometimes I just write things for fun._

_Jiùxù, qù!_

* * *

_**RED.**_

* * *

Gardening. To Tohomiko Kimiko, it was for a long period far too feminine a hobby to take on, it didn't come into the picture. No one suggested it to her, who would, the girl who kicked and lifted chairs when she acted out? When she was chosen to become the Dragoness Element of Fire, she found herself torn between two convincing arguments: avoiding it out of fear of burning the pure-looking, harmless colorful plants to a crisp if she dared touch them, and desiring, deeply, to defy Omi and his blatant, ignorant—if the rare childishly honest sort—sexism. She is twenty-two. Omi, wherever he is, whatever is he up to, now, he is twenty-one. Raimundo Pedrosa is also twenty-two, and, according to her calender, Clay Bailey's birthday has recently passed, making him as always the eldest of their quartet at twenty-four. He was sixteen, and she fifteen when they first met. Doesn't he attend a rodeo without fail every time an important date comes up back home? Texans and their traditions.

She must call him. Send him a letter. A good, long, detailed letter, and try not to smudge the words with her foolish nostalgic tears. No, more than that. She should go _visit_ him, face-to-face, in-_person_, and maybe cry on his shoulder a bit, he'd let her, probably wouldn't even ask any questions until she was done, because she _misses_ it all, why did it have to end, she regrets so much—

Throat closing, Kimiko forces herself to return her attention to the unexpectedly discolored piece of work sitting before her on an outdoor side-table. The flowerpot is hand-crafted and distinctly Oriental in design, a cute little addition to her bright, spotless Japanese home. Outside, in the sun, the one source of firelight she can't dream of controlling. Tulips. She wanted red ones. She must have created a mistake in breeding them somewhere, these flowers she's doted upon for some months, primarily out of sheer boredom, and mild, morbid curiosity. A girlish pastime. A foreign concept. These are clearly more orangey than what she pictured originally. There's a gash-like lack of redness in her life.

Several years prior, she would have positively raged at this aberration, might have thrown it straight off her balcony onto whoever poor sap of a stranger strolled haplessly in the streets below. She was a touchy...she was short-fused. A bomb. Fung's guidance was a godsend. She was born into the affinity of fire not without cause, but fire can be reigned-in with effort. Well, not all. There exist many kinds, the lowest being charcoal, the hottest is oxyacetylene. Fortunately, she's never been a pillar of blue-fire—_yīgè qiángdà de zhīzhù, lán sè de huǒyàn_—the most powerful level that a _lóng huǒ_ can reach. She screwed up a lot, like any other teenage girl. Not on that scale._  
_

How'd she manage to bounce back from each incident which afflicted her? How did she manage to keep her friends, her three, stupid boys, whom these days aren't infected with that pesky, annoying idiot-teenage-boy syndrome (mostly) any longer? _Somehow_, against all assurances by adults growing up, "Childhood friendships don't last, don't expect them to, you'll end up disappointed," she's still in contact with Rai, Omi, and Clay, and fully intends to maintain that contact until the very day that she dies. Another surprising thing: she didn't irreparably offend the Master to the point of no mending. _That_ one still impresses her; communication with older, graying people wasn't a forte of hers...ever, actually. That personality trait did not mix well in the Japanese culture, and getting older before the introduction to the Xiaolin-Heylin war was hell.

Not anymore. Not anymore...

She screaming matches she could entangle herself in..._shinseina tawagoto!_

She is thousands of times an improved person for it. They all are, how much can change in less than however-many years? Evidently, one's entire heart and soul.

She sounds like a poet. She ought to write a book.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket. A text. She checks it. It says a single word. _KiMmy?_

It's not Raimundo's number. Or Clay's. Omi doesn't own a cellular phone despite protestation. He relies on handwritten scrolls, and she doesn't mind that one bit. His handwriting is always unique, Japanese wasn't exactly an item on his list of things to learn. He does really have a list like that! Nobody is shocked. Who is ever shocked with that kid? She smiles fondly.

Have Rai or Clay bought a new cell?

She doubts it. For what reason? Why message her like _that?_ May be a typo. Simple as that. Clay's spelling, punctuation, and grammar is flawless (his relatives would never allow for otherwise, they're a classy Southern family), and it takes him ages and ages to reply without fail. She waits patiently when that happens. Raimundo speaks in endless streams of infuriating chatspeak, randomly-inserted Brazilian Portuguese phrases tossed about therein, frankly making Kimiko feel like vomiting the remaining half of the day afterward. Fung is adamant about sophisticated phone-calls on her home-phone, which can be a chore occasionally, but someone close to her is never troubling. Fung only suffers the horror of cell-phones when he absolutely cannot help it.

Dojo babbles on and on like a maniac, a part of why she prefers to just request he fly on over to her place to talk—why not? He's a supernatural being, he can be anywhere in a heartbeat—instead of having to pay more and more _qián_ by the minute for a long-distance phone-call. There are a lot of minutes when Dojo the wu-sensor _lóng_ is involved.

This is different.

_Hello. Who is this?_ She texts.

_Wow, yoU're being so cIVIL! I am shell-shocked!_

That...what?

Mind blanking at the strangeness, her fingers move over the keypad. Rude. _Excuse me?_ Is this an old flame or an ex-friend from god-knows-when (she tries not to dwell on Keiko...that was an emotionally-tasking evening...) coming back from the dead to haunt her? Coming back from the...why bother going through the trouble? She can't recall her last date. She was fourteen, then the Xiaolin monk lifestyle swept her up. That's not to say she didn't try again, coming back to Japan, but she is so much more aged and experienced mentally than others in her age-group...it...isn't funny. It's markedly depressing some nights.

_Aww, don't you recogniZe me, KimmY-ko?_

For a moment she simply does nothing in response.

_I CHALLENGE YOU...to a Xiaolin showdown, Kimmykims_

She stares at the screen and her heart somersaults. What is this? What _is_ this?

_Hellooooo_

_JACK?_

_IS THAT REALLY YOU?_

The answer is immediate: _You better bElieve it, bAbY!_

'Baby.' _Iesu· Kirisuto._ Stupid. An endearment. The last time she heard it—

_Where have you been?! Where are you?! We all thought you were dead!_

_You wanna see me THAT badly babe?_

No. She wants to punch him. In the gut. _Ōmaigoddo._ She can _hear_ his voice, it's so easy, like it's right there, in her ear.

_hA, NO ANSWER, DIDN'T EXPECT ONE_

Goddamn it.

_oK HOW DO I FIX MY SCREWED UP KEYS? THE SHIFT KEY IS ALL BACKWARDS AND SHIT IDKWTFFTD_

_IDKWTFFTD?_

_i DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FLYING FUCK TO DO_

_That's nothing new!_

_Oh hey thanks. Thanks a LOT_

_Ok now its fixd_

_Jack you asshole! Tell me where you are!_

_Whoa, woaoh! Don't like HAVE A COW! I'M RIGHT HEREEE_

_What?_

_Look up_

She doesn't hesitate, and he's _there_, when did he get there? On her awning, feet swinging to and fro without a care in the world, the son-of-a-bitch. _"I'm Jack Spicer, not just Iceland, not just Fiji..."_ His ridiculous outfit hasn't changed at all, and she just needs—to—hold him—forever—_  
_

His steel-toed boots land next to her open sandals with a thump.

"For some reason, it just never really _ocurred_ to me how _Japanese_ you are." He looks her over quizzically, like he's seeing her for the first time in a new light, a far cry from the searing glare of sadness and something else he departed her with last. He's forgiven her, she's forgiven him, it's been too long and too much has happened in that span of time to hold onto those grudges. It's in his eyes—maroon, not that flaring blood _anger_—in the lines of his face (faded cuts from not being careful enough with tool machinery), he looks older. How much older? He must be nineteen. Her age before. He was sixteen back then. "It's totally _crazy_."

Nope, no changes at all. Fuck all.

"Lookit this place. Everything's so...squished together."

Is he trying to set her off?

Of course he is, what a pointless question. She huffs. This is Japan. It's an island the size of California with a bunch of smaller, connected islands, and it's called home by a lot of residents. He wants to garner a reaction, like old times. He's gonna get one. Just not that.

"How can you stand it here?" Teasing suits him well, more than in the past. Was it really not even a decade ago that his voice held a whiny edge to it? He was thirteen, and then fourteen...he slipped from the radar during his fifteenth year, she can't remember much of him then...'sweet sixteen,' hit him like an anvil, puberty drop-kicks _everyone_, eventually, and suddenly he became more shoulders, pointier chin, less complaint (that's a lie, but he learned how to express it more cleverly) and a dollop of...leer, jeer, and the fall-on-his-ass and find his footing, usually in his mouth. Wuya left him for Chase Young, and she supposes that's the main reason he disappeared a year. He was lost. He came back, with something akin to a vengeance, he didn't need someone with him every second, anymore. It didn't sweep her off of her feet, that was a difficult feat to accomplish for literally anyone, but she did notice.

Flawless flashy re-entrance, he said.

Her, Kimiko, a nineteen-year-old young _woman_ by then, beyond the legal adult age minimum in most countries, driven batsy by a snot-nosed little jerk, who by all means was a _brat_, and certainly she told him to screw off. She hadn't acted as _enforcer_ of her own warnings well enough, she tolerated him, a minor, and wasn't snapped out of it until the others reminded her of the fact with great, great scorn (at him, not her, God, he was such a bullying magnet). The spiel ended abruptly, and he might have terrified her a little, it was a busy time, and he was yet another new thing galumphing along into her life to relearn. It took her a bit to recognize him, she remembers.

Jack liked her confusion. He told her so. He also informed her that he really liked her.

"It's where I grew up, jackass..." Her chest burns, her least favorite burning.

He grows visibly alarmed, because deep down, he in fact was a nice person, caught in the middle of something bigger than himself, chucking him around like a ragdoll on worse nights, and he can feel _concern_ for another human being, not like the _other ones_ he associated with (who manipulated him, took advantage of how effortless it was to make him blink, "Uh...wha'?"). His eyes grow wide, he looks younger, "Hey, hey, what's wrong? The waterworks—they're freakin' me."

She hugs herself, and why isn't he hugging her?

"It's all over, Kimmy," he says, "Don't worry about it."

Kimiko's fingers tremble, clutching his useless ornamental collar, "Jack—"

"Move on."

She accepts it a beat, then shakes her head rapidly, "What?" Ethereal, everything seems blurry. His stare bores into her, "You gotta move on."

Move...? On?

"You did nothing wrong. Stop blaming yourself, I made a mess outta something I couldn't handle in the first place."

She realizes that they were texting in Japanese the whole time. Jack didn't write or understand a lick of Japanese...when he was alive.

"I love you, I just want you to know that. It doesn't matter now, but you, and the others, you losers—_you guys_ were the closest thing."

"God _damn_ it! I _love you too!_"_  
_

This is a dream.

She wakes up. Jack Spicer is dead. He's staying that way. She goes to her balcony, and the tulips are still not red enough.


	2. Unsaid

**_UNSAID._**

* * *

Quiet town. Netherlands. Ha, ha. Nether-lands. Okay, enough with the juvenile jokes—I wish she'd quit it with the fireballs, they're really annoying—

"GET AWAY FROM ME!"

"Sor-_ree!_ Just tryin' to see if I can help—"

The fireball evolves into something vaguely dragon-looking (holy shit, she can make _shapes_ out of _fire_, now), and it chases me about twenty feet before it disappears…but not before grazing my face with its tongue of flame. What am I even supposed to call that? The Flame Lick of Death?

When I catch my breath, she's standing over me, the sun directly behind her head, casting a silhouette and a shadow across my crumpled, pained form. I sit up. She turns away. Most likely looking for witnesses. Gorgeous Asian women conjuring flames out of thin air? Not very beneficial to the Xiaolin cause. Or the supernatural side of life, in general.

"_Fifth_-degree burns, Kimmy," I rasp.

"Get over it."

"You think the hospitals around here have any medical kits—" She whirls on me, "—for public use?"

"You mean an _ambulance?_" I open my mouth. Kimiko sticks an open palm in my face, as if to demand that I speak to it, instead, "I don't care."

You don't care that I'm hurt? I might be Heylin at the moment, but we're not, like, _mortal enemies_. I daresay that this isn't very Xiaolin of you, sweetheart.

What the hell do I know about Xiaolin?

I guess I don't _really_ need an ambulance, anyway, I mean, aren't those for dying people? Can't get rid of me _that_ easy, babies.

However, I'm not the best at concealing my thoughts, and the scorn on my face is a little more evident than I meant it to be, and—yikes. Kimiko can look really cold when she wants to. More important things to worry about…elemental dragon…why do you always need me here to save you…well, she _used_ to rant at me for a whole six minutes when we were younger, explaining to me in _great_ detail why I was so annoying and how she was only helping me out of the kindness of her fiery heart.

Not so much of that, anymore. I suppose I'm turning out to be more and more of a lost cause than I ever seemed before. I can handle that—I expected it.

She used to be so nice, though…except for when she lost her temper. Hey, she was a kid. Now it's constant paranoia, keeping her guard up, all the time, and I get _why:_ older you get, the less sunshine and rainbows the world is. But, it's _me_. Not-so-bright, semi-vile, pretty much harmless little me. Have I _done_ something to make her distrust me, or, what? Besides running around in dark clothing and practicing evil cackles.

"Why the _fuck_ do you keep following me for, anyway? Everywhere I go, you show up!" She whips her hair in frustration. I half-expect her fist to lash out at me, I think I'm staring too much. At least, she hasn't curled her lip and bared her teeth at me, yet. The sheer amount of disgust girls can muster up into one look. No wonder I have no luck with them. Maybe I should try guys.

Dear God, I just considered that.

"Shen-gong-wu!" I answer, throwing my hands up in the air, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world, and it is! Why else could she be here? She could just have been traveling for joy, I reasoned, but that's good enough reason, too, a pretty lady touring the world all alone, she might know karate, but muggers have chloroform. I have a spike of common sense for once, and don't mention my fear for her safety. She'd call bullshit.

"That's a bullshit reason," she spits, and, well, fuck. Huh, when did she get such a husky Angelina Jolie voice? I haven't really been paying attention to mine, didn't figure there was much reason, I don't plan of marrying at any point in my life, anyway. Don't wanna pass on my parents' inheritable stupid to whoever _my_ poor kids would be. I wonder what Kimiko thinks when she looks at me? Probably something involving the word, 'raggedy.' "There hasn't been a wu for months!"

She's caught me there. "There's a ton of reasons why I keep following you around!"

"Like?"

"If not the wu, then…I don't really have anyone else to…" I trail off there. It's true, and it bothers me occasionally, but she's not buying it, or just doesn't want to hear it. "Uh…"

I got nothing.

Her lips purse and her head tilts in that horrible, wrathful feminine way that scares the living shit outta me, and I know she's either gonna start screaming at me, laughing at me, or walk away without a word…which is usually the most cutting insult out of all the things she could do.

Instead, her fists clench. I know what that means. This is the last straw for her, and she has no qualms making it known.

* * *

Kimiko marches up to the three of them, Rai, Clay, and Omi, having brunch outside the temple. "Spicer's in the infirmary. Just wanted to let you know."

Raimundo is quickest to gather his wits, "Whoa, you _flamed_ him? Wish I could've been there—"

"No, you don't!" She snaps immediately, and he shuts up. "I _hurt_ him, Rai. I really hurt him. Hell, fuck. Twice."

She looks really upset—and he says nothing else, he understands the feeling of guilt, of hurting somebody and regretting it, and thinks, no, _knows_, that that's the only reason Jack Spicer is here, in the infirmary of the Xiaolin Temple. Out of the kindness of Tohomiko Kimiko's fiery, fiery heart, the heart he tries so hard to learn and memorize the pathways of. They are together, after all.

It has nothing to do with the way Jack hasn't changed at all throughout the years, despite obviously wanting to so bad it hurts him.

Jack is younger than her, anyway. Isn't he Omi's age? Well, Omi is more innocent by default, of course. What kind of twisted kid does someone have to _be_ to get inducted into the Heylin side when they're _thirteen_…Raimundo gets queasy just thinking about it. Yeah, Spicer's had his nice moments. Don't all psychopaths try to blend in?

It's been how long, and he's still high on his Evil Genius crap? What a creep.

Some things—and people—are not worth the effort.

"Need any help?" Clay asks, because, well, he's Clay. He's a gentleman. He's also not an idiot, and doesn't press when she declines. Raimundo has half a mind to follow as she goes back indoors, but sometimes she just likes to be alone, doing things herself (they're too old for chores, now, with their own protégés to train. Master Fung is retired with the rest of the old, elderly monks).

There is nothing to worry about.

* * *

Except that there is.

"How the hell do you not know if—" Kimiko pulls at her hair.

Jack grips at the sheets underneath him, "I—I'm not a doctor! I'm sorry! Internal bleeding—I just figured it was aching like everything else—it looks like a bruise!"

"Bruises don't spread that way, you dumb shit!"

"_I didn't know!_"

"You didn't know! Of course, you didn't know! You never know anything!" Her cheeks are red and puffy, "You've never known anything! You shouldn't love me! You should never have met me! I killed you!"

"Love—what—fuck—! I…" The shock settles into him, and the stubborn haze that's always been between the two of them is broken, but the honesty comes too late.

"There's nothing I can do for you! You can't even move!"

He rests his head back onto the futon.

"Why did you have to piss me off?!"

He stares at the ceiling.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

"_Hey!_" He sounds like a man. It doesn't matter to him, now, though only hours ago, he would've cheered, "Cursing isn't _fucking_ lady-like, god damn it. Shut up!" He adds when her mouth quivers, "I'm talking now. Hell. I was wondering why I felt so cold. Oh _fucking_ well. Listen. This is not your fault. No one wanted me anymore," he ignores her sharp intake, "I had no purpose, and I figure someplace like the Xiaolin Temple is the best funeral home you can get. So, deal with it, I'm dying. I'll be out of your hair, and everybody else's, too. You should be celebrating." She protests—"_I want you to fucking celebrate!_ Or, I fucking swear, I will haunt you all from beyond the grave."

Not even magic can fix this.

By the time Raimundo enters the room to check on his oddly silent girlfriend and her irksome patient, Jack Spicer is lying very still. When he asks why, after a frozen minute of staring at that unmoving chest, Kimiko says that she wants to separate from him. Her declaration brings Raimundo Pedrosa back to reality like a bullet to the heart.

"_What?_ Oh my _God_, is he _dead_—what, are you, _talking,_ about?!"

She pulls her knees up to her chin. "I didn't say it. I didn't say I loved him back."

"Wh—"

"We need to celebrate."

"Kimiko, I love you, you're making no _sense_, please tell me what's wrong!" Raimundo flounders, "We…need to get him out of here…"

"I didn't _SAY IT!_"


	3. Pepperspice

**_PEPPERSPICE._**

* * *

Right. So, my last hope for survival and escape has officially abandoned me. I say that as if I'm talking about one person, because, well, I am. Wuya and Chase may as well be a single unit now. They act in unison. Always. It kinda makes me sick to wonder what they talk about when they're alone. Or, worse, what they do when they're alone. Oh, god, no, gross. Don't go there. Wuya, you're a god damn pedophile. Chase is stuck in the physical body of a twenty-one-year-old till the end of time itself, and you're…uh, not. Ugly cougar.

I kept telling myself that I was overreacting, reading too much into things that weren't actually there. Kind of like what I have been doing my whole life.

I remember how it was before. Years ago. Feels like yesterday, the forces of good and evil, black and white, easy to deal with. Everything seems so much bleaker. When did that happen? I used to be so blind to the world and the people around me, and suddenly I swear I just know too much. How can so much on the inside of me change in such a short amount of time? I don't know why I even bothered asking them to help me. It just kind of came out of my mouth. I'm so used to saying it. I saw it in their body language, I heard it in their voices, in how they wouldn't look directly at me. The words they said just sounded closed off, more than usual. Their shoulders were angled away from me…why don't I act on this shit when I _see_ it?

What the hell could I have done besides ignore it and wait to see what happened?

They laughed at me, and then they were gone.

Why would they just suddenly leave me and take off? Did I embarrass myself without even fucking _noticing?_ Again? Did I mumble something stupid in my sleep? Fidget too much? Did they just decide I was screwing up their villainous mojo and they weren't gonna tolerate it anymore? Am I too old? Are they bored with me now that they can't toy with my naïveté? Am I _forgetting_ something? What did I _miss?_ I always _miss_…

I always…

What do I do.

What. Do. I.

I think I'm fifteen already. I dunno. My birthday. When was it. I'm not sure how much time has passed. Am I freaking out over this. Maybe they have something else up their sleeve and I misinterpreted it entirely. Maybe they were laughing because I was unbelievable as usual and didn't catch their true meaning. Maybe they'll be back. Maybe…they'll…?

This place is gonna blow.

There is no possible gain from sitting here like a fool.

Where is my way out?

My brain is fog and mush. I can't think. _Where is my way out_.

Am I going nuts? I am. I am I am I–

GET ME OUT OF HERE!

I have an hour. An hour to sit here and slowly panic more and more deeply over my inevitable demise.

God.

This all began when I was thirteen and going through a Goth phase. I dyed my hair. I wore eye-contacts. Then, it became less of a stab at fitting in with an idea and became more of who I am as a whole. I can't imagine myself the way I am now still as an albino. It's gotta be red. Redder than blood. Redder than my arteries which I'm gonna _cut through_ if I can't get out. It's better than being blown to pieces. No it isn't. An explosion would be quicker. Bleeding out takes a long time. But, if I kill myself first then at least I can die knowing it was by my own hands and not because a couple of shitheads thought it would be funny to leave me to a fate that they know only they could have ever controlled.

I legitimately want to kill myself. How's this for adulthood, Jacky? You never even got anyone to call you spicy _once_ before you died.

Spicy.

Spice. I have…_spice_. Explosive spice. My spice. Spicer's Spice.

I can throw it at the ceiling. It doesn't matter that it's made of stone. This stuff is powerful. Spiciest spice in the world.

I can get out.

I'm such a slow motherfucker. Did they–did Chase and Wuya even know I _had_ this shit? Did I tell them? I can't remember if I–no. I didn't. I was busy thinking about…other things. Like not pissing off my superiors. My superiors who finally decided that I am simply too dumb to live, who were stupid enough to assume that people, especially _young people_, can't change.

It's a reddish-yellow little pouch. I even took the artistic liberty of drawing some pseudo-Oriental symbols on it with a Sharpie for the sake of trademark stupidity, and it's full to the brim with some strong stuff that's perfectly ready to implode once it makes contact with a surface with a bit too much force.

I like to think that it explodes with flavor in your mouth.

It is loud. Really loud. I duck. I think it made me deaf for a sec. There's no smoke, it's a bunch of sediment with enough behind it to down a building. Tiny particles to blast a hole through solid brick. Stop rambling.

I've been contemplating renaming it Spicer's Pepperspice. Give me feedback, babes, is it cool enough?

…SHUT THE FUCK UP, I'M ON A ROLL HERE!

I'm on a…

The sky is cloudy and grayish.

There's nobody waiting for me. It flickers through my mind a moment that perhaps this was all a test; Chase likes things like that, and Wuya is certainly sadistic enough. No one is here. Who'd assume that I'd blow the roof to smithereens and helipack my way to safety? Nobody who's familiar with me and the way I think…or don't…think. That's not the point. I fucking knew there wouldn't be. I wonder why it's making me pause. No, I know why, and I shouldn't be senseless and float here in the air wondering. Can't stay. Place will detonate.

See ya. If you care.

I bet you don't.


	4. Things That Will Be

**_THINGS THAT WILL BE._**

* * *

Jack Spicer knows a thing or two about the concept of infrastructure. Oh, he might not be very talented at manipulating it to his own ends, nor may he be very good at operating within it, as part of a unit, or even just a loose web, but he recognizes complex social systems when he sees them. He stands there twiddling his thumbs like a moron when he witnesses it in the works, lost, something which others are fond of taking for granted—Spicer? Don't mind him, it doesn't matter what you say around this guy, he won't be able to do anything about it. If he tries, it'll blow up in his face. I'll stand there and help you laugh at him when it does.

Har, har.

The roads and streets and back-alley passageways of human interaction, the highways and tollbooths and…listen, Jack gets disoriented in the whole fiasco every other day, at best, and at worst, he finds he's entangled in the equivalent of a car-wreck, limbs twisting this direction and that direction unnaturally. And no one cares, so long as he manages to pull himself out of it again and quit whining in their ears, like a kicked puppy, clueless what it's done wrong. Infrastructure, except there's no ambulance or maintenance-crew to try and piece together the slick, bloody slivers of broken flesh strewn across the ground, or re-cement the cracked sidewalk that is Jack freaking Spicer. What a poetic metaphor. Comparison? Jack never went to high-school English. Or middle-school. He didn't finish elementary, now that he thinks about it…

Initially, or, the first thirteen years of his life, he had no word for it. It was there, though, and it is. It isn't something he can simply brush away with an explosive bomb or several (he's tried. He was thirteen. Logic was not applicable most days), it was another thing that the more fortunate and worldly than he tended to possess, lording it over him like a carrot before a working-horse, often without meaning to. For the longest time, it didn't occur to him that perhaps, he didn't deserve to have it, anyway. He's Heylin. He's a Bad Person. Of course, this revelation came far after the first few, and while it slowly built up strength, growing closer and closer like a pendulum, Jack was akin to a little kid suddenly realizing that they have been tricked by someone cruel and older and _mean_, becoming deprived of an Important Thing. _Hey, I want that, too! Lemme have it! Hi! Can I have it?_

_People who want me around for the sake of having me there?_

_No._

At first, it had been a Thing That Was. It dawned upon Jack Spicer, eventually, that it was in fact a Thing That Needs to Change.

'Needs,' present tense, because it hasn't happened. Not yet.

There is nobody he knows on any level whom gives it as much thought as he does. The Xiaolin, briefly, maybe, only scratching the surface of the panic he brings on himself some nights, thinking too hard, worrying about his future. _Geez, doesn't this guy have any friends to hang out with instead of bothering us? I kind of feel sorry for him. Too bad he's such a selfish jerk, oh, well. It's not my problem. You think he'll grow up someday? Ha, not likely…_If they ever wonder how he's faring at all, obviously, it must be in passing. He can't _really_ begrudge them that, he guesses. They're big people with big souls and hearts and stuff like that, excelling in areas he never has. Courage, bravery, selflessness, chivalry, compassion and empathy and goodness and blah-blah overall.

All that _good stuff_. Pun, intended.

It was less a factor of, _Pssh, friends? Who needs those? _So much as it was, _What, no, I call you names because I like you! I don't mean it like th—what do you mean that's not what friends do? You call your friends stuff all the time—how is that different—ow! Everyone calls me names but no one's said they hate me yet. Stop screaming at me—!_

Social norms. People take them for granted. The socially inept may as well be classified as a minority, the way they're singled out on an accepted, daily basis. Nobody blinks an eye. They fail at life—no, no joke, they literally _fail_ at it, no friends, no lovers, probably no family outside of the negative sort, no excuses for their sheer _lack_ able to be found; they should be treated as such.

And, then, there's the lingering fear in the back of his mind. What if he truly is the foolish, incorrigible slob Wuya always claimed him to be? What if he honestly is making all this up? Pretending he's more than he is, as if he has more worth in the grand scheme of things than he actually does?

What if, what if...

He forces a shrug of his shoulders, next, imagining the action flings the weight off. It'll come back. He is fifteen, now, and his time has run out. You gotta age fast in this lifestyle, if only in the arts of self-preservation. The kinds of things he has been through, how easily anyone could have killed him on the spot, during any point of this _shindig_ he jumped into guilelessly years ago—

Argh, stupid word.

During any point of this _fallacy_, the Heylin-Xiaolin war, apparently never-ending, evidently all-consuming. How many shen-gong-wu are there, again? He can't recall off the top of his head. It's damnation the second one touches a wu. With time, wu-sensors like the shapeshifting _lung_, Dojo, become redundant. Jack supposes Dojo lives at the Temple in the first place as backup, for whatever reason, the monks had been young when they started out and hadn't yet developed the ability to jolt awake from the electrical current that was a shen-gong-wu emergence. One becomes infected by the magic, unique and specialized specifically for wu, filled by the aching need to hunt for the goddamn things, to scour the ends of the Earth for them—and beyond.

And Jack is no exception. He scares himself sometimes with how much he _wants_ them, and he can't help but entertain the notion that the monks feel perturbed by it every once in awhile, too. The addiction.

The War demands _respect_.

Who is Jack to try and break tradition…

Heh, he's Jack Spicer! 'Dishonor,' is his middle-name…but, not in this case. Maybe it's just because he is slightly wiser than in the past. There are lines.

He isn't exaggerating about the searing greed for shen-gong-wu. Even Chase Young dwells on it aloud, praising it. Worshiping it? Was it Jack's imagination the previous night, when he flinched at a sharp screaming sensation in his mind, yanking at his fingers, shoving him to his feet, _go, go, go, get it, kill for it…_is the 'killing' part exclusively Heylin? Does Raimundo Pedrosa have to swallow the feral noises clawing up his throat, like Jack?

"Sir, there is a new wu," emotionlessly reported his bots.

"Yeah, I know," he'd smirked, "I might be crazy, but I think I felt it." He allowed himself to marvel. Is he improving, or are these all just Things That Are Happening? Regardless…

He is no master knife-wielder, but he has been watching others who _are_ for nearly three years now. The blade in the space between his digits is not at home, but it is not out of place, either. Evil Boy Genius is not quite on the mark as it used to be (oh, god, the _lament_ for that loss…), but on the other hand, it's making room for Evil Man Genius.

Jack is no longer thirteen.


	5. Years Later

**_YEARS LATER._**

* * *

"Hi," Kimiko greeted with good cheer. She thought she did, it was kind of hard not to let her lip curl vaguely.

"Hey," Jack said in return, seeming not to see it. She wasn't sure, but, then, she didn't really care either way. It had been years since they had come across one another and maybe she should give him a fairer chance, but the memories whirled as if anew in her mind, of all the slights and disagreements between them, and she found she couldn't quite.

They were older now, not the kids they used to be. Jack, surprisingly, actually had some fuzz on his chin, a dabbling of bright red against chalk-white. He was still wearing the dark clothing, but it looked far more normal than the Gothic ensembles he used to don. Kimiko herself went through many style phases, but never had she met someone who'd stuck with just one for so long.

He didn't appear impressed with her. She wasn't impressed with him. They went their separate ways. That was years ago, anyway, the wu were collected and the showdowns were over with, so she didn't expect the hand on the back of her neck though she could have sworn she never heard him move—


End file.
